Nintendo say that they have several other high profile titles in development but that they won't announce them until their release dates are a lot nearer. So expect Starfox 3D in 2017.

Anything much else happening?

- - - - - - - - -

SELFISH REASON FOR THREAD:

So the brother-in-law has an Xbox360 he doesn't use anymore and has said I can borrow it indefinitely. Obviously I'd rather nick his PS3 so I can play Uncharted & Last of us but this'll have to suffice, the selfish fucker.

So what do I need to know? Do I have to join Xbox live or anything to get it to work? Can I stream my Netflix account through it? What games are particularly awesome for it (games I most want to get myself: Bayonetta, Tomb Raider, Arkham Asylum, Mirror's Edge)?

- You don't have to join xboxlive to get it to work, but a silver account is free so you may as well
- Netflix does work, but only with a gold account. Which is, frankly, bullshit.
- There's plenty of fine games for it: what specific kind of stuff would you like to play? Off the top of my head I'd add Vanquish, Fallout: New Vegas, Dark Souls, the Bioshocks and the Mass Effects to that list.

Vietnam is mostly dead I'm afraid. I went on just before my xbox died and the only game I could find was just one guy riding around in a tank. In circles. I've no idea how long he'd been there. Needless to say I blew that tank up and quit.

Generally finding that games I can pick up and play or are just a total blast suit me more. With a kid on the way and work commitments rising, gaming is very much a pick up and play for an hour or so here and there past time for me nowadays - indeed that's why I still only have a Wii as I've been working my way through the 15 games or so I have for it since I got it 5 years back.

Vanquish always struck me as the kind of game I'd like though; OTT, silly, short and mental - so that's on the list! Same reason I thought I'd like Bayonetta. Portal 2 - man, I LOVE the original.

Never played a GoW game so will investigate that too. Prefer the look of Asylum to City (sandbox games can be great but also strike me as fun, 20 hour titles dragged out to 150 hour trawls, hence why I think I'll avoid Red Dead Redemption, GTAIV, AC2, Skyrim etc - sure I'll like them, but doubt I'll ever get through them).

Driver: San Francisco, awesome game.
The other you're thinking of is Split/Second, it's ok, but it gets a bit tedious as there are not enough tracks. I would more recommend Blur, fantastic game, a little bit like Mario Kart, but more real world

AC2 was much more polished, fluid & italian. the recreation of Venice is amazing. a true 90%er.

the later ones are all equally good games, (Rome is awesome too) but by I think the 4th game it had all become tediously repetitive, never finished that one and never bothered with AC3 (the 5th game). Seemed to become more like a FIFA in that the annual game was more of an update than a development.

think I am about 60% of the way through? taking longer than I expected, but I am extending the life of it somewhat by looking in every single corner of every single room/area just in case I can find a note or a pair of scissors or something.

incidentally, have any good vita games come out recently? should really put that to use on my commute rather than solitaire on my phone but have finished uncharted and wipeout and got sick of gravity rush :/

On 2 July 2013, Rockstar announced that Grand Theft Auto V will require a mandatory 8 GB (approx) install on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 version will ship on two discs: the first contains the installation data and the second is used to play the game. Rockstar also confirmed that an Xbox 360 Hard Drive or external USB flash drive (at least a USB 2.0 with 15mb/s read speed and formatted for Xbox 360) will be required for the initial install for Xbox 360. For PlayStation 3, the game will ship on one disc.[7] Rockstar assured that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game will be virtually indistinguishable from each other

That's something I'd expect to see on an official PS magazine really, it hardly screams 'reasoned in depth debate inside'.

That and the fact it's quite clearly nonsense. While a lot of people may for various reasons prefer to buy a PS4 (including me) to run a headline suggesting that it's the only viable option is hyperbolic tosh of the worst kind.

It seems to be seen as a cheap aspiration compared to the more 'worthy' aims of tension, drama and realism.

All of these things are obviously great but I think games/developers often get a disproportionate amount of praise for approaching the latter while games excelling at the former are too easily written off as simply cheap & cheerful diversions.

The motion capture and character models are the best I've seen in a game, hands down - it's incredible given the ageing hardware it's running on.

The environment art I could take or leave - the 'overgrown city' thing seems to be a common motif recently, and I think it's been done better, notably in Crysis 3.

Same with the general setting - I'm just burnt out on post-apocalyptic wastelands teeming with the infected. It's done as well as any game ever has, but I was hoping for something a little different.

*** SPOILERS ***

The 'escape' intro was pretty exhilerating, but to be then reintroduced to Joel as your stock mumbling psychopath and be asked to take down a bunch of faceless gangbangers down at the crate-strewn docks, it just seemed like a bit of a concession to what the average COD spod might expect from their games.

Never completely warmed to Joel either - in fact, he seemed like a bit of an asshole, and the script, though commendably subtle for a game, was a bit more potty-mouthed than I'd like.

Still, from about 1/3rd of the way in (after you leave Tess) the plot moved forward at a good gallop and the hooks stayed firmly in 'til the end.

***

As with Bioshock Infinite, there's also the problem of feeling compelled to search every corner of every room for equipment - it's a bit more understandable here than in most games, but it still kills the pace of the more frantic sequences in the game. When a horde of zombies are clawing at the door it's hard to justify strolling into the next room and opening all the drawers for vital equipment before jumping out the window and legging it.

Don't really get where the whole "amazing story" comes from really- stock zambees story fronted by a stock guy and girl who never earnt their happy ending. Good but hardly the genre mover it's being described as.

He's as good a flawed-hero as I've seen in a game and, most importantly, all of his actions are explicable because of how nuanced his backstory and motivations are.

***SPOILERS***

The fact that he can't face losing another *daughter* despite the fact it's an inherently selfish act to keep her alive is wonderfully tragic and completes a fantastic arc from indifference to an individual in favour of self to become that attached to an individual at the expense of himself and every other human being left. I thought it was very well done personally.

The bit with the giraffes was the most unexpectedly poignant thing I've seen in a game I think, was genuinely heartwarming and I actually sat and looked at them for ages before progressing.

It's an aesthetic I like a lot in fairness so that might make me a little biased but what sets this apart is the fact it's a true, living (ironically) environment where every little detail hints at what was there beforehand. I lost count of the amount of times I'd be sneaking through an abandoned house and I'd stop to look around every room, they were all unique with real thought having gone into who lived there and what happened to them, the fact that you'd stumble across bodies in later parts of the game which belonged to former residents of places you'd been through is an incredible attention to detail and shows the commitment to creating a fully-realised and fleshed out world.

The little notes you'd read and the way there was stories that could be told in every location makes me hopeful that they've got enough up their sleeves for the (probably inevitable) sequels. Just think about all the Ish stuff, a character you never see and don't really know what happened to him but there is enough stuff in the gameworld to make him someone you think about.

If they could just marry that to the kind of unique settings and storylines only possible in games, we're golden.

I think people tend to overlook that, for all the technological advancements games such as Heavy Rain and TLoU have brought forward, the actual plot and dialogue is a bit cliche. For all its gameplay faults, Bioshock Infinite did a great job in that regard.

Focus was on wonderfully nuanced characters and compelling and often very poignant storytelling. I think judging it without fully experiencing the story it was telling is doing it a huge disservice if I'm honest.

Tbh, I want Euro Truck Driving Simulator and Train Simulator, Farm Sim is evidently doing pretty well for itself and apparently OMSE is pretty good as well. Some of the others do look unbelievably shit though.

and, much like Fallout: New Vegas, it ended up being an unfinished rush job (though I do love New Vegas). They seem to specialise in writing great games that they don't have the time or resources to actually make.

They're just a bunch of evil douchebags you'd have to be an utter bastard to side with in the released version when they were meant to be a lot more conflicted. The
reason you have to take a boat trip to the one area from their side of the map is because they didn't have time or resources enough to create their half in it's entirety.

There's a bunch of stuff out there on the web about it that's worth looking into. I love NV as it is but it could have been so much more.

It's 1200 points on xbox live and awesome. Stealing hours I don't have.

Last night I accidentally alerted a zombie horde whilst inside a farmhouse and after expending all the shotguns shells I had, ultimately had to escape by leaping through a 1st floor window.

Also booted someone out of our trucking compound for being a tediously non-stop downer on all the other folks. Good luck on the outside dickhead!I let him keep a gun though...because I'm not a total sociopath.

I read about a potential co-op feature on the non-story survival mode update that's scheduled for release.

There's some flaws but they're minor. it's a long time since I got into a game as much as this, and it's better than a lot of very highly regarded full-price games. A lot. Anyone into the idea of an open-world zombie apocalypse survival game should get it, basically.

It takes the same mechanics, adds new elements to it which open up a whole new level of puzzle fun. The main improvement is how much more involved the plot is though, there are so many fun little background additions and Merchant is great fun. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first one and I bloody loved the first one.

but the first one is such a tight package that I still think it's the superior game. The 2nd one didn't feel quite as satisfying, mainly because it was 8/10hours as opposed to 3. The first one was just constantly at the highest possible standard where the were parts in the 2nd where I felt it started to slip a little bit, but thats simply what happens when a game is made longer (usually)

Truly mental and only 3 days after his wedding as well. Feels so strange to be upset over someone I never met dying but I've been listening to the podcast and watching their quick looks/weekly shows for so long now that it sort if feels like you know him, yknow?

one day you'll be driving past the golf course and just think "fuck it, might have a game of golf today" and you can do it. Then on hole 9 when you get bored you can just decide to shoot everyone and dive off a cliff.